


My Second Life Is Yours

by theoldgods



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Canon-Typical Violence, Community: got_exchange, Duty, Hands, Hurt/Comfort, Ink, King Stannis, King's Landing, Kingsguard, Loyalty, M/M, Permanent Injury, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, Resurrected Jon Snow, Spring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-03 17:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5300903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoldgods/pseuds/theoldgods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon Snow’s death does not free him from his oaths—instead, his loyalty is transferred to a stone-faced brute who remains the Seven Kingdoms’ best chance at stability and whose own near death while in Jon’s care forces him to reevaluate their connection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Second Life Is Yours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



> Written for round 14 of got_exchange on LJ, for the prompt "post-war, Stannis has won the throne and someone tries to assassinate him," sort of in Linn's Kingsguard!Jon world.
> 
> Feel free to contact or follow me on [my tumblr](http://theoldgods.tumblr.com) for more ASOIAF/Stannis content if you so wish!

That the knife only brushes the king’s thigh is due to a number of factors, chief among them Stannis’s remarkable ability to grunt and twist, slamming down with the pommel of his sword. Jon sees that much, at least, before he’s knocked from his saddle, his own sword useless in its scabbard as he crashes into the spring mud. He rolls to his feet, avoiding hooves, allowing the pain to roll off him with the mud. 

Jon opens his mouth to scream out a warning and finds that everyone’s eyes are already on Stannis. Two other Kingsguard—Justin Massey among them—have circled the king and are herding him off toward the Red Keep as the crowd of onlookers scatters. A cloaked figure is halfway to the Mud Gate when Jon begins running after it.

The chief benefit of dying and being resurrected, Jon thinks as he hurtles down a narrow alley, gaining on his quarry, is that there is no more pain; his burned hand, ruined what seems like so many centuries ago, flexes easily as he draws his sword. The second benefit is the look of fear that crosses the would-be assassin’s face when he glances back to see Jon’s face, lips bee-sting large, scabbed and swollen from where he was kissed back to existence. He stumbles, and Jon takes him in one fluid motion, sword piercing his throat. 

His instinct is to spit on the man, mayhaps bury him under a heap of nightsoil or roll him into the Blackwater. Instead Jon wraps his arms around his still-warm body and begins the arduous process of carrying the man back to the Keep.

Halfway there he meets Massey, who slows his large draught horse to grimace at the spectacle Jon knows he is, all grey skin and white cloak dripping some stranger’s blood. When Massey offers a hand, Jon does not hesitate, sliding into position behind him in the saddle and draping the body across the horse’s hindquarters. He holds onto Massey with one arm and keeps the body in position with the other as they start off.

“His Grace said you’d want the scum for explanations,” Massey remarks after several minutes’ silence. “I wish you good luck with questioning the dead. Do you have skills in that area now?”

Jon chokes on a suppressed laugh. “No. But we should find what we can from the body.”

This is something that a maester like Sam can handle perfectly well, he knows when they eventually dismount and he sends the body to his old friend. The two men-at-arms tasked with carrying it wear expressions that would charitably be described as “disgusted,” and he cannot imagine Sam, Citadel-hardened or not, being pleased with the gift, but returning to the Keep has brought back the one pain Jon does still feel from time to time, the ever-prowling fear that, after so long and so much death, he will still fail at this, the mysterious business of keeping Stannis Baratheon alive. He heads for the king’s chambers without so much as a glance back at Massey.

Stannis himself is alone, at his desk with his left leg elevated on a second chair, writing. Jon stands in the doorway for a moment, listening to the insistent scratching of quill on parchment and, in the distance, the muted chirrup of birds audible through the open window. Spring air stirs the circlet of hair the king has left to him.

“Lord Commander. Have you found the man?” 

“I believe so, Your Grace.” Jon is uncomfortably aware of the small pool of blood forming on the stone beneath his feet. He goes to one knee, wincing as the dampness sinks into his breeches. “I’ve sent the body to Sam to see what he can make of it.”

Stannis turns at that, one eyebrow twitching. He schools his face back to impassivity before answering.

“If there is aught to be learned, I suppose Maester Samwell shall learn it.”

“That is my hope, sire.”

Stannis stares at him for another moment before setting down his quill and reaching for the bowl of water just out of arm’s reach. Jon bounds to his feet, picks up the bowl, and offers it to Stannis, who pushes it back at him with something akin to a smirk on his lips. “You may report, Lord Commander. Clean yourself while you do so.”

Heat blossoms in Jon’s cheeks; he looks briefly askance as he balances the bowl a respectable distance away and reaches for the rags left after bandaging the king. “Yes, sire. My apologies.”

He keeps his attention on his own scratches, cleaning the blood from himself as best he can as he describes the chase and the man’s quick end on his sword. Thus ordered, he does not dare hesitate as he also removes his cloak and chain mail shirt to clean the sweat beginning to congeal underneath, though he is keenly aware of the thudding of his heart.

Stannis listens in his usual silence, drinking from a cup of lemon water. When Jon finishes both his report and his washing, folding the damp and bloody rags into a neat pile on top of his cloak, he bows his head and waits.

“You did well.” Stannis’s voice comes as if from a distance, certain of itself yet faint. Jon looks out of the corner of his eye as Stannis scratches absentmindedly at the bandaging on his upper thigh. “It sounds as if it is discontented peasantry, as will always be with us, but mayhaps there is more to it.”

“We will keep investigating, sire. You were fortunate, and I apologize—”

“I have died, or nearly died, more times than I can count in this campaign. Whatever gods there are do not much like me, and had they taken me today, I only regret that the country is yet too fragile for more succession nonsense.” Stannis clears his throat. “Do not seek blame where there is none, Lord Commander.”

Jon meets Stannis’s gaze. “You are mine to protect, Your Grace. I would not lose you only a few months into your reign.”

Stannis laughs, a short and bitter sound. “You are as stubborn as the whispers say I am.” He scratches at his thigh again, and this time Jon moves to answer, rewetting a clean rag and letting it hover over Stannis’s thigh until he grunts his acceptance. “Your father would be glad of it.”

“My father who sired me on a fishwife.” The skin beneath Jon’s touch twitches with Stannis’s snort as he massages the wound. “My fishwife mother who bred me to clean and kill.”

“Do you jape with me?” Stannis’s voice is calm, soothing to Jon’s ears, which still ring with the sound of panicked horses and feet dashing down alleyways; he has turned his attention back to the parchment, paying Jon no more physical attention than the involuntary movements of his muscles. “You have learned how to treat a king from Lord Davos.”

“Is Lord Davos impertinent, sire?”

“Lord Davos is commonborn, as well you know.” Stannis shifts in his chair, moving his leg out of Jon’s reach as best he can in its incapacitated state. Jon sits back, twisting the wet rag to give his trembling hands something to do. “A smuggler.”

“And your Hand. Forgive me if for even a moment I feel safe.”

Stannis looks down at him then, and Jon feels the warmth spreading across his cheeks. He nonetheless does not look away.

“Thank you, Lord Commander. That is all for now.”

* * *

Stannis does not pay much attention to the wound in his thigh, going about daily business with only a scowl on his face to show how much he feels any sort of pain. Jon and Sam ask him to rest for a day, but Stannis does not even look in their direction as they plead, and Jon cannot help but smile at his king’s inability to care for his own comfort.

“He is foolish,” he admits to Sam a week after the incident, watching as men-at-arms remove the last bits of the assassin’s body from Sam’s chamber. The mouldering smell of rotting flesh has remained overpowered by the incense that burns in each corner of the room, and by what Jon is beginning to suspect is a personal immunity to the worst bits of death, but it is a relief nonetheless to reopen the windows and let fresh air inside. “In all the right ways.”

Sam shakes his head, offering Jon the dagger they removed from the body. “He should watch himself,” Sam murmurs as Jon runs his fingers over the lion roughly carved into the base of its handle. 

“I cannot tell him again that there are still fools out there who wish him dead for some horrid banner as this.”

“He will already know.” Sam walks to an open window, closing his eyes as the weak sunlight plays across his face. “He will already have suspected.”

“What, that Lord Tyrion plots against him already?”

Sam’s glance could wither glass. “That death does not keep ghosts at bay, as well he knows every time he looks at you.” Jon kicks the flagstone with the worn toe of his boot. “Do you think that Cersei and Jaime Lannister killing one another killed every person who had loyalty to them?”

“Loyalty to Cersei Lannister?” Jon feels a headache beginning over his right eye. “As well be loyal to a vicious snake thrashing in the sewer.”

“I do not think it was part of any greater conspiracy,” Sam murmurs. “There are unhappy people everywhere in the world, still. I do not think any noble is fool enough to hire some treacherous footpad just after half the world has frozen to death and we are finally within reach of a moment’s rest.”

“Not when the footpad will hire himself. And you are right. Why should hungry people be particularly loyal to a stone-faced brute?” 

“Why should a dead man risen serve a stone-faced brute?”

“Death has stripped me of any need for air and mirth. What I need is to be grounded.” Jon laughs softly. “And I swear that one day I will make him smile, if it breaks every tooth in his mouth.”

“He needs his teeth to talk,” Sam reminds him, smiling nonetheless. “Go easy with these southrons, Jon.”

“Always.”

He feels uneasy nonetheless, standing in Stannis’s doorway once again with the dagger in his hand and his heart, for a moment, in his throat. “Your Grace.”

Stannis turns. The second chair is gone; both his legs are underneath his desk. He grunts and shifts his weight as he waves Jon in.

Jon hands him the dagger, watching as Stannis’s eyes travel straight to the lion figure. “Sam does not think it one of Tyrion’s, sire.”

“Tyrion has seen too much to want to play his fool game now. And Tyrion’s assassin would be competent.”

“Tyrion’s assassin would finish the job, sire.”

Stannis snorts as he hands back the dagger. “Blessed rest at last. I might even accept it from that half-grown monkey.”

“A worthy opponent. A worthy ally.”

“Did you come to congratulate me on my previous pieces of diplomacy, Lord Commander?”

“I came to tell you that we must tighten the guard the next time you ride out to look at new ships, Your Grace.”

“No.”

“Yes.” Jon does not explicate further, merely watches as Stannis stares at the parchment before him, whatever sentences he had left off. Several moments pass in silence until—

“Will we have to pay further?”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “Sire?”

“Must we hire more men for this ceremonial foolishness, or do we have reserves enough to draw upon as it is?”

“We have enough, sire. It’s merely reassigning on the day.”

“Very well.” Stannis rewets his quill. “Gods preserve me if I must ride out to look at more ships within the next moon; they will smell the blood still leaking from my current wound.”

“Lord Davos shall be back from settling the princess at Storm’s End soon, sire. We will wait until then before riding out. Mayhaps he can go in your stead.”

“As ever, he is where I would rather be. And if I were a commoner stuck in the hellscape that is this city, I would rather look at Lord Davos or at you than at some grizzled stag.”

Jon feels dizzy for a moment, as if the weak sunlight falling across his face—still such a welcome sight after however many moons of complete darkness—had turned to summer’s heat. “I would rather look at you, sire.” Before Stannis can speak, he continues, “It would give _me_  strength, were I a bastard of King’s Landing and not Eddard Stark’s. To look after you, to help you may someday be the best job I shall have.”

Stannis pauses in his writing, ink dripping slowly from his quill onto the desk. He rubs at it, smearing black across his fingers, face rueful. “Lord Commander, do not flatter me. I am not more important than killing Others.”

“Rebuilding is the most important thing, sire. After death is spring.”

“I am the least springlike person you may find in the Seven Kingdoms.” 

“Duty is duty. Do yours and we all shall be the better for it, no matter if you smile.”

Stannis’s grip on Jon’s wrist is both sudden and painful, biting even through Jon’s general bodily numbness. Jon breathes in and out, his lungs scarcely shifting, tightly bound to his ribs by the dizziness now settling through his veins, a sudden stupid compulsion to smile or to cry, mayhaps both at once. Heat radiates from Stannis’s continued touch, the way his fingers wrap around him, the weight of his fingertips against Jon’s pulse points. If Stannis can feel the way his heart throbs, the electricity that jumps along his skin where they touch, he makes no sign of it.

When Stannis eventually releases him, it’s with a certain softness to his face. “Can you die a second time, Jon Snow?” His eyes, as deeply blue as ever, rake Jon’s face as if searching for the answer in his mangled appearance and his own eyes, mercifully still the same shade of grey Jon has always seen when looking into his glass.

Jon resists the urge to rub where Stannis’s fingers pressed. “I do not know, Your Grace. I imagine so; Beric Dondarrion could die seven times.” He swallows. “I hope so. Whatever the answer, my second life is yours.” 

“Yes.” Stannis turns back to his parchment, face still more placid than Jon has ever seen it, his mouth loose with something dangerously close to contentment. “That is a duty I am grateful for. Until later, Lord Commander.”

Jon bows and turns for the door.

In his chambers that night, he stares into his chunk of looking glass, observing the body that has looked back at him for more than a year, bloodshot eyes and swollen lips, skin more grey than white, red welts across his chest, one for each of his brothers’ knives. And out of the corner of his eye, as newly incongruent as the first moment he reawoke—inky fingerprints smeared across the veins of his wrist.

_In the morning_ , Jon promises himself as he sinks into bed. _Wash them in the morning._

He falls asleep with his face pressed to his wrist, inhaling the faint scent of ink and lemon.


End file.
